


Imagine, if you will

by letmetellyousomething



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Gen, Implied/Referenced Torture, M/M, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-02-18
Updated: 2014-02-18
Packaged: 2018-01-11 00:57:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,708
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1166700
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/letmetellyousomething/pseuds/letmetellyousomething
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Psiioniic keeps the Signless company on the day before his excecution.<br/>He fails him.</p><p>Later the second coming of the Sufferer gets trapped in an unusual mind.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Imagine, if you will

They let Psiioniic spend the day before the execution in Signless' cell. Of course it was a gesture of cruelty. They didn't let Signless see Dolorosa, his troll lusus, nor Disciple, the one he loved above anybody else. It mocked the Signless and his unusual quadrant arrangements.

They put a helmet on Psiioniic so he couldn't see or use his powers and shackles around his wrists, similiar to the ones Signless would be wearing. Just another way to grieve him. Psiioniic moved until he felt a wall. He rammed his head against it until Signless asked him to stop.

"No use. You won't even get a dent like that. Please don't knock yourself out just yet."

I need to do something, snarled the Psiioniic. He was the hard hitter of the group, the exceptional Psiioniic. Really, who even called themselves that and just that- Psiioniic? It was preposterous. Wandering around, cladded in flashing warning colors like a wasp- preposterous. Learning and teaching the message of Signless- again, preposterous. Fortunately only in hindsight.

"Yes, well," said Signless tensely. It was weird just to hear his voice and nothing else. It gave Psiioniic quake beast bumps. "It's putting me off, haha."

I'm sorry, said the Psiioniic and laughed as well, leaning against the wall until he had to bite down a quiet sob. His behavior was pathetic. He was supposed to be the mercy morail here. He was supposed to shrive a last feeling jam with Signless. How many trolls in their movement would've been more worthy of this position!

It was hot and smelled unhealthy in the cell. There was no sopor slime, there was no latrine. Signless told him that they had not covered the view hole from the sun. Psiioniic didn't dare to ask if there was anything to make a pile out of. Truly, they hadn't been close like that. If the Dolorosa would've been here, she could've soothed him with words alone.

"Can you tell them..."

What, asked Psiioniic after Signless didn't go on.

"Oh, surely you know what I'm talking about in a situation like the present one!"

Only a fool would take you up on that. They would rip my words out of my nutrition tunnel and throw them into my nasty gash face the moment I lather my shitty excuse of a speech, said Psiioniic and meant: they would want to hear it in your words. Sure, if the Disciple would've been here, she could've spoken for him.

So Signless started to speak about acquaintances and friends they had in common. He gave kind descriptions and encouragements, but it still sounded like he was just commenting on them.  He didn't say anything about the Disciple or Dolorosa. As if I can deliver these messages anyway, Psiioniic thought, not concentrating on Signless' excessive predictions about some promising cavelreaper he barely knew. Psiioniic was too useful as tool to be killed by them, but the other followers? 

The first time Psiioniic had escaped from slavery had been something unimaginable, a revolution in his mind that they hadn't accounted for. That he could shoot brain lasor beams helped, of course. They would probably torture him to get names and then... then? His imagination rammed against a wall, again and again.

He awkwardly moved into Signless' direction as far as his chain let him. After a moment he felt Signless moving to his side.

Signless seemed collected enough right now. He even wanted to talk about where they had gone wrong, how the movement would took "it". He briefly speculated what the highbloods were thinking and who would come tomorrow. His voice gave in at this point.

 "Mind if I ask you what is frying in your thinkpan, Psiioniic?" he asked after a while.

Psiioniic was thinking about pressures and desperate measures. He was thinking about nasty thinkpan sponge stress due to maximum psionic overload and internal pressure blasting a bone hull and an iron helmet.

Psiioniic asked him if he wanted to die. 

"No, not yet... Not yet, my friend." Signless' voice was shaky when he replied.

Later Psiioniic would torture himself with the thought that he hadn't made his offer clear enough. That maybe he wanted both of them to die as martyrers instead of getting blasted to pieces in this prison cell.

-

They made him attend the excecution. Of course they did. A smug highblood with a silky voice described to him what was going on, even when he could picture it clearly enough. Now they’re putting him up. Now he tries to exclaim something blasphemous, but the crowd is booing too loudly.

He, who never had to raise his voice to make people listen.  
Psiioniic heard when the sizzle of the iron shackles started. He smelled his burning flesh.

While the highblood broke out into a gleeful recitation about double death, carnivals and a messiah, Psiioniic tried to make sense of it. He tried to keep the upright poise he was known for, but soon he cringed away from the agonized cries.

It couldn’t be Signless. Surely they were holding a mock trail. They had pinned some mindless animal to the rod instead. The screams only sounded remotely like a troll now, followed by pleading, threatening howls to not come closer or get killed-

Psiioniic had failed him. Maybe nothing would have helped him through this with dignity.

After they finally, finally shot him, Signless suddenly started to raise his voice again.

Was it him, but greater, his voice fueled by limitless rage? He damned their people with infernal snarls, his voice carrying far across the sea of heads. He presaged the coming of a second Signless who would end his work, no, bring the end of their world. With this promise and a burning damnation against everyone, he went quiet.

Psiioniic felt the malicious vibes of his words weigh down on him, felt them turn against himself, against Dolorosa and Disciple. Psiioniic didn't believe him. The crowd whispered ominously after this Vast Expletive.

"He’s dead," said the Highblood. "Bummer, your motherfucking fake messiah’s dead." 

-

They made him the Helmsman. Psiioniic thought a lot about Signless' last words before they could install him. He detested the thought of this future second Signless. He stood for his Signless’ falling of belief.

There was no solance, no peace of mind, no hope for an end for him as the Helmsman.

He couldn’t escape into happier memories. His mind was restless, hooked into the space ship, running with the speed of light. His dreams were full of test runs of ship manoeuvres. He couldn't tell what was his own mind and what the operation system never letting go of him.

Finally, he did turn to Him for vegeance, hoping He would extinguish this cruel world. With time Helmsman forgot the voice of his lusus, the faces of his friends, the feeling of wind and water and warm pale moonlight.

Helmsman pleaded to Him to deliver him, without words, having lost the ability to form thoughts outside of calculations. It took several lifetimes after this point, long after he had let go of his most basic will to live to finally, painfully, lose his self.

Psiioniic had thought that the execution would scatter the movement of peace and understanding around the Signless. He was right about that. What he couldn't imagine was that they would instead regroup around the Sufferer, as He would be called. They would prepare for the second coming of Him.

A Sufferer however, who wouldn’t be without a sign and place this time, so they speculated.

\---

There was an infinite number of Karkats wandering through paradox space.

This Karkat was no different. He was dead, like most Karkats. He hadn’t reached godtier, had never mastered his Blood Powers. Again, like most Karkats. He was miserable.

By chance he hadn’t met the right bubbles, so he hadn’t met enough Nepetas, Jades, Sollux’, Kanayas, Daves and Gamzees or anybody else of his friends. There were quite a few of those Karkats. He lived his death mostly in solitude. Karkat punished Karkat by not imposing himself, generous but mostly egoistic, a flickering individual speck of suffering clearing out against a vastly indifferent universe.

This Karkat had a death wish, or at least seeked out danger, when he reached for an unusual dream bubble. It felt like a spinning thinkpan cake, no, like an weirdly dense ball, then again like a washy bubble dough without much substance at all. Nobody with a sound mind had a conciousness like this, he thought.

Karkat gritted his teeth, moved into a fighting stance and took out his sickles when the two bubbles morphed. Maybe he expected the world-destroying alien macho god another Karkat had told him about, one who had spoken to the Alpha Aradia herself.  A wave of almost physical discomfort washed over him.

He stepped from stone to metal. It looked… like the stage decoration of an old fashioned action flick, the ones with tons of space travel propaganda. This must be the navigation bridge, Karkat thought. It didn’t look like a room to stay.

Sticky, slowly pulsating bioware engulfed the corners, the ceiling, the monitors. He felt nauseating contempt towards them, as if there were all Future Karkats pissing themselves and disappointing him horribly.

Karkat stepped forward, towards the exit that surely was just outside of his vision. He moved, but his vision didn’t change. He spun around, but it still showed the same narrow perspective of an engine room.

It felt so real, realer than anything that Karkat had experienced since his death.  
So certain that no atome, not a grain could have been moved for eons. Only with the upmost will force could he move the picture a few centibugs to the left, to the right and upwards. He tried to look down to see his own body, but there was just a column of revolting, bare pink flesh.

Claustrophobic panic hit him. Karkat willed himself to breath slowly, reaching for a connection to his own bubble like a fleeting memory. There was none. He tried to kick and struggle. He didn’t feel the hilts of his sickles and for a moment he thought he had no hands.

Karkat screamed. Something had trapped him.


End file.
